When people ask what the next big thing in social media will be, they’re usually looking for an ascendant platform that will supplant Facebook the way Facebook supplanted MySpace or they’re expecting a feature set, such as geo-location or group messaging. But what if it’s not a network or a tool? What if it’s an application?
“Internal social media is the second wave … the future of work is in communities,” said Cisco’s Andrew Warden at this week’s Corporate Social Media Summit.
Warden gave the crowd four reasons to start looking at internal social tools:
- The next wave of employees will expect it. The current workforce has members of every generation who love social tools, as well as those who loathe them. But the next generation of workers will have no such divide, Warden argued. These workers will have grown up with these tools and will expect to use them as part of their internal work communications, because that’s how they’ve always communicated. Failing to have an internal social media system in place would alienate these workers and keep them from fully contributing to the company, Warden said.
- The workforce is increasingly global. Global deals, branch offices and telework are going to become more common for companies of every stripe and if you want remote teams to work together and stay engaged with their mission, you need to give them tools to work collaboratively, just as if they were all in the office together, Warden noted. Social tools also make 24-hour operations and complex global deals easier on employees, by allowing work to pass easily between time zones, thus empowering work/life balance without a loss of continuity.
- It can make management easier. By watching internal social communications between employees, managers can figure out where their workers are spending the most time, where their pain points are and what resources are needed to enhance performance, Warden noted.
- A strong corporate culture may depend on it. The focus of social media so far as been on external branding — communicating your vision and values to your customers. But what about your employees? Do they understand the company’s vision? Do they share it? Feel like they’re a part of it? Live it out everyday in their work? Warden notes that internal branding allows your company strategy to permeate the corporate culture, instead of working against it.
Of course, embracing internal social media will bring me fresh challenges, he notes. The technology is still evolving — Cisco decided to build their own internal tools rather than go with an outside vendor. Training is key, particularly since broad guidelines such as “don’t do anything stupid” can mean radically different things to workers of different generations. And not every department will embrace such tools with the same vigor, possibly creating the need for incentive programs, he noted. All the more reason to get started now — before the next generation of workers shows up.
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Yes! Yes! Yes! The more innovative organizations understand this and have focused on internal communication first or at least along side the public spaces.
I use Thotstr, Yammer and Chatter to connect with various internal teams. Before they were around I used Moodle with chat enabled to create internal KM and connection platform for organizations. Thank you so much for this post! Always appreciate your brevity,clarity and great info.
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Enterprise 2.0, Social Business, Internal Social Media – different wording for a concept that is some years old already and never really took off. But i guess yes, the present hype and adoption of social media in general will pave the road to push the internal use forward finally. So its justified to talk about a second wave of social media.
I guess you might-as-well expect it. The younger generation is all they talk about is social media.
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Many enterprises have barely learned how to reach out and engage with their audience externally in terms of social media. Mindsets have several challenges and fears yet to overcome and change will be slow when moving from a control of information culture ( the broadcasting of information in a one way outbound fashion) to one of feedback and engagement. Many not identifying with and understanding social media today perhaps may not come into the future at all. But social media adoption whilst still early on in the ‘hype curve’, acceleration is now faster than ever.
The question of internal collaboration as far as sharing is concerned has been around for a while albeit clunky , more based on shared documents and central information and usually under tight procedural, content and workflow controls. Certainly, internal social networking and communications will have a positive impact on better awareness / status quo of any task but overall company / employee brand will be better understood – much in the same way as social branding is done externally. Again the adaptation may be inevitable in time but companies will have the same reluctance factors in relation to control of information and the internal brand message now coming into the hands of their employees – formerly the Marketing & PR scripted people!
The next wave of employees are already here. Not only employees but your future clients and customers now will expect things to work the way they do in their social space. For attracting and retaining the best talent, those companies with excellent employee brand and social network activity will be inbound attracting the best like-minded people. The internal social network will to some extent, shine though in positive light as innovation and emotion through engagement (hopefully!) Challenges will come with securing and isolating internal social networks and IP from entering external networks but some elements of internal will be joined to external y design, becoming more transparent and part of the external positive signal and brand perhaps.
The article is right on the dot. A number of such tools are either already built or being built. Basecamp is a well-known example. Check out Communication Tracker for a new tool which delivers not only ease of management but also business continuity – http://www.communication-tracker.com
Great article. Probably the boarder between company internal and external will even fade to a certain extend. So you could create e.g. content collaboratively on an internal basis and publish it afterwards to your website and other social networks like this startup is obviously doing it.
Super article and absolutely spot on. Not only will social media enable organisations to communicate internally but it's the foundation of building an brand ambassador community with employees.
As I have always said and follow in practice – Communication, Collaboration and Consensus practically applied through – Think, Learn and Act! There is no management theory which can adequately encapsulate the trends of today and the future – Social Media 2.0.
Microsoft Sharepoint is a great internal tool to use for communication. Most companies use a Microsoft based server, which comes with a basic version of Sharepoint. There a blogs, wiki's, discussions boards, etc.
We are using social media to extend customer care and brand outreach. The big four for us is Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The last firm I was at used Skype as an internal social media platform and also to keep in touch with clients and a few outsourcing companies that we used for SEO. Now that I am a online marketing manager for a Niche industry (Metal Roofing) we don't have any internal system. I would welcome anything that Cisco came up with. Right now we are leveraging social media for outreach and not internal communication.
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had a quick after thought, as usual, if anyone is looking for an amazing platform right now. You should most certainly check out Google Wave, it has been in beta for a while now but it is a great internal system…
https://wave.google.com
Your Welcome… please send all check payable to Chris Labbate…. lol
hummm – I jumped on Google wave .. about … ummm at least 12 months ago ??? I heard it was … well 'washed up' (?) Sorry for the pun
Hmmm, I still wonder where everyone gets the TIME to keep up with all the social media coming at them today. What's being neglected. Good corporations found ways to communicate with their employees before the rise of social media. Social Media is being pushed because of a younger demographic. Companies will always have a need to control things. Social Media used properly can be a good tool, but I think it is overrated! Too many tools, too little time.
For the last decade or so, email has been the engine of productivity among employees, but not particularly efficiently – my inbox is hell!
I suppose with cloud documents on links and then social media for collaboration, couldn't social media just be the more optimised evolution of email for productivity?
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When I read about all the benefits that social media will bring, I always wonder what happened to traditional management? I use the phone to simply call staff in whichever country they happen to be located. It is realtime, personal, easy, cheap, quick. There are no software or platform -installation -update, -compatibility, or maintenance issues. You can call me old, but I can't see which problem these internal social media experiments are trying to solve.